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Of: Amanda hallsten, Linus Lindgren
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A research group in England believes they have found the answer to how long antibodies protect against covid-19.
But the protection is not complete and you can get sick again.
You also run the risk of infecting others, even if you have antibodies.
People who have had COVID-19 are likely protected against the infection again, for five months. It shows a study that the Public Health England (PHE) research team is currently working on, which CNN is writing about.
The study is not yet complete. The results so far also show that the risk of recurrence of covid-19 is 83 percent lower if you have antibodies to the coronavirus, compared to if you do not have covid-19.
It is not a safe protection and you can get sick again
Therefore, antibodies against the coronavirus do not provide 100 percent protection. The research team also warns that you can pass the infection to other people even if you have antibodies yourself.
– We know that most people who have had the virus and developed antibodies are protected against the disease again. But protection is not complete, and we don’t know how long protection lasts, says Susan Hopkins, PHE senior medical advisor and one of those leading the research study.
Photo: LOTTE FERNVALL
You run the risk of infecting others, even if you have antibodies.
The results of the study so far show that you are most likely immune for at least five months, but researchers are not sure how long the antibodies protect. 83 percent protection also means you can get sick again, even in five months.
– If you think you have already had COVID-19, it is unlikely that you will become seriously ill again. However, there is still a risk that you will get sick a second time. There is also a risk that you will pass the virus on to other people, Hopkins says.
Large test group
A total of 21,000 people participated in the study, working in the health field. Of these, almost a third had developed antibodies against covid-19. The rest showed no signs of prior disease, but in the group that had antibodies, 44 relapsed.
The researchers will continue the study for 12 months, to see if the protection can last longer than five months in some. If the results obtained so far are correct, it means that those who fell ill at the beginning of the pandemic can now become ill again.
Photo: Johan Nilsson / TT
Antibody protection is not enough for life.
Researchers are also studying how effective the vaccine is against the new mutation of the virus discovered in the UK.
Because the results of the study so far cover the period before the new variations of the virus were discovered, researchers do not yet know whether the antibodies also protect against them.
It must be immune, if we want to remove the restrictions.
Simon Clarke, a British researcher in microbiology at the University of Reading, comments on the results of the study so far.
– The positive news is that the study shows that the risk of relapse in covid-19 is small if antibodies have been developed, even if the protection is not enough for life, he says in an interview with the BBC.
But Clarke doesn’t just raise flashes of light.
– The worrying thing is that those who have antibodies can still carry the infection and infect others. This means that the majority of the population must develop immunity to the virus if we are ever to be able to fully lift the restrictions, he says.
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